Free The Darkest Gate by S M Reine Page A

him a moment to realize what she was asking, but then he took it and squeezed her fingers.
    She didn’t let go for the entire examination.
    E lise retrieved the bowl that evening.
    She didn’t want to stay at the hotel with James. It was too hard to face him. On the other hand, finding Mr. Black again was easy. She stood on a street corner until his slender, whip-like aspis appeared on the other side.
    She walked to a bakery and looked in the window. His reflection appeared behind hers.
    “I’ll do it,” she said, pretending to study green apple cupcakes. The sight of food made her stomach give a hard cramp, like it was trying to digest itself.
    A thick roll of paper was pressed into her hand. By the time she turned around, Alain was gone.
    He had given her a note wrapped around a roll of money. She didn’t need to count the bills to know that she could buy all the cupcakes in the bakery if she wanted. Elise sat on a bench to read the note while savoring a flaky, buttery croissant.
    So glad you came around to my way of thinking. Here’s where you can find the bowl. See you tonight .
    Numbers were written at the bottom. Coordinates.
    She sneaked into the motel where James was showering, grabbed her hiking boots, and stuffed most of the money into the bottom of her backpack. The sound of water traveling through the pipes shut off. She left a handful of twenties on his pillow, tucked her spine sheath and swords under one arm, and slipped out the door.
    Using a map from a corner gas station, she pinpointed the coordinates Mr. Black had given her. They were centered on grassy plains bisected by freeways, where great native civilizations had once occupied the land—civilizations that had since been destroyed—and left nothing behind but pottery fragments and earthen mounds.
    Elise took a cab to the edge of town. There were no exits from the freeway directly to the mounds, so she climbed over a concrete barrier and walked along the rolling hills.
    Cars whispered along the overpass. An occasional horn honked. She moved deeper into the hills without worrying anyone would see. The moon was nothing more than a yellow sliver glowing between wisps of clouds.
    The grass grew long and lush as she moved into a valley between mounds. Dew misted on her bare legs. Mud slurped under her soles.
    She had brought the map with her, but there wasn’t enough light to make out the place she had marked. It didn’t matter. A strange quiet settled over her as she approached the eastern mound. It pressed inside her skull like wool. She could tell she was getting close when she found signs of an archaeological dig: leveled ground, a few posted signs, strings stretched between stakes.
    Elise hopped a low fence meant to keep tourists away from the excavation and beelined for bushes at the back that hadn’t been cleared out yet. She pushed through the branches.
    The hole she found was only a few inches narrower than her shoulders. It could have been mistaken for an animal’s burrow that had been worn away by rain.
    She grabbed fistfuls of mud and threw gobs of it over her shoulder. Once the hole was widened enough for her to fit in with the sheath on her back, she squirmed inside. Mud scraped against her shoulders, her hips. Elise dropped to the bottom of the hole just a few feet down and straightened.
    Her vision adjusted to the darkness, but there was nothing to see. Roots dangled from the ceiling. Shards of rock pocked the uneven floor. It was small enough that she couldn’t straighten fully. But the pressure inside her skull had worsened, and she knew she was in the right place.
    Elise felt along the back wall. Her hand slipped into the damp soil, and her fingers met something hard.
    Blowing her bangs out of her face, she dug into the mud. There was smooth stone on the other side. She drew a sword and rapped the hilt against it. Hollow.
    She drew back her arm and smashed it into the wall.
    The stone crumbled. A few more strikes, and she made a